The wheat imported from Brazil is edible by humans, says a report submitted yesterday before the High Court by the Directorate General of Food, which contradicts with the lab test results by a number of other government agencies.
Foyez Ahmed, director general of the food directorate, handed over the report to Deputy Attorney General Tapos Kumar Biswas in compliance with a previous order. Later the DAG submitted the report before the bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Taher Md Saifur Rahman.
After accepting the report, the bench fixed July 8 for passing an order on this issue as the writ petitioner prayed for time.
Tapash argued for the state while Mahbub Uddin Khokon stood for the petitioner.
After the hearing, Khokon told reporters that even though the food department claims the wheat to be consumable, findings of other orgnasiations say it is rotten and sub-standard. “It seems that the claim is not right. This is not a complete report,” he said.
The High Court on June 30 had asked the authorities concerned to clarify whether the wheat was suitable for human consumption.
A lawyer named Pavel Mia filed the petition on the basis of reports published in a number of national dailies. Pavel sought the court’s directive so that the “rotten wheat” is tested at the labs of the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI) and the Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI). He also demanded a probe by the ACC into the allegations.
Recently, media reports said that thousands of tonnes of wheat imported from Brazil and supplied by Singapore-based contractor Olam International was substandard.
A couple of other government studies concluded that the wheat imported from Brazil in February and March was sub-standard while a significant volume was rotten. One of the studies by the food directorate found that six out of the 30 tested samples of the Brazilian wheat had living insects.
The other test by the BCSIR found that all the supplied samples contained higher amount of shrunken and broken kernels than the supply specification.
After news on rotten when surfaced in the media a few days ago, political and rights organisations demanded resignation of Food Minister Kamrul Islam, who, despite having the studies, claimed before media that there was nothing wrong with the imported grains.
Earlier, the minister had said that the government was not going to order wheat from Brazil again because of the poor quality.
